Stories of American Life and Adventure | Page 8

nails was a new thing to the
Indians. Those who were not killed ran away very much frightened.
There was a young girl in Maine who was in a house when the Indians
attacked it. She held the door shut until thirteen women and children
could get out of the house by the back door, and pass into a blockhouse,
which is a kind of fort. The Indians beat down the door at last, and then
knocked down the brave girl behind it, but they did not kill her.
Sometimes the Indians attacked a blockhouse when there were none but
women in it. In such cases the women would put on hats, and fix their
hair so as to look like men. Then they would use their guns well. The
savages, thinking there were men in the place, would go away.
There was one girl who was a captive among the Indians for three
weeks. One day she saw a horse running loose in the woods. She
stripped some tough bark from a tree, and made a bridle of it. Then she
caught the horse, and put her bark bridle on him. It was just growing
dark when she climbed on his bare back, for she had no saddle. She
turned the horse's head toward the settlements, and rode hard all night.
The next morning she was safe among her friends.

THE COMING OF TEA AND COFFEE.
When the first settlers came to this country, tea and coffee were

unknown to them. The favorite drink of that time was a kind of weak
beer, which was usually made at home. The first settlers in America
could not buy drinks such as they had had in England, and in a new
country they often could not make them. So they found out ways of
making other drinks in place of them. What we call root beer and birch
beer, and a drink flavored with the chips of the hickory tree, were made
in New England. Farther south the people made a kind of drink by
mixing water and molasses together, and putting in Indian corn.
Such drinks were taken at meals as we take tea and coffee. People also
drank a great deal of cider. As the cows hardly ever gave any milk in
winter, children were given cider and water to drink. But about fifty
years after the time that the first settlers came to this country, people in
England began to get tea and coffee. Tea and coffee were soon after
brought into this country. At first they were thought to be medicines
good for many diseases. Little books were written to tell how many
diseases these new drinks would cure. Root beer and birch beer, and tea
and coffee, were good things in one way. After they came into use,
people did not care so much for stronger drinks.
When tea first came, it was very fashionable. It was called the new
China drink. Along with the tea, people brought from China little
teacups to drink it from. Most of the cups before this time had been
made of pewter. The new cups and saucers were called chinaware.
They also brought from China pretty little tables on which they set the
teacups when they drank the tea.
When people first got tea in country places, they did not know how to
use it. There was a minister in Connecticut who bought two pounds of
tea in New York. He took it home with him, and put it away to use
when anybody in his house should be ill. He wanted the tea for
medicine. His daughters had heard about the fine ladies in town who
took tea. They were curious to taste it, and were not willing to wait
until they should be ill. So one afternoon, without letting their father
know it, they asked two young men who were friends of theirs to the
house. Then they got out the package of tea, intending to treat
themselves and the young men to a new pleasure. They knew nothing

about making tea. When they had boiled it a long time, they poured off
the tea and threw it away. They put the tea leaves on a dish, and tried to
eat them as one would eat spinach. This is the way they punished
themselves for disobeying their father.
Before the Revolution, when gentlemen called at fine houses in the
afternoon, the ladies always gave them tea to drink. As soon as a
gentleman's little cup was empty, one of the ladies would fill it up again,
and it was not polite to refuse to drink all the tea that was offered. A
French prince who was in Philadelphia during the Revolution drank
twelve little cups of tea one afternoon.